To The Future

REPOST: I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THIS. SORRY! :)

Well, a little time has passed since the launch of Chapter 3, I hope you're all enjoying it.

First off, thank you to everybody who's supported the development of Behind The Curtain over the last few years. Some of you have been here for a long time, some have only just joined since Chapter 3 launched, but either way I appreciate it.

Without people supporting the games, the games don't get made.

One thing I did get wrong though was who I thought a lot of the Free Members were. I assumed a good chunk of you were people who'd played Chapters 1 and 2, were following development and waiting for Chapter 3 to arrive before jumping on board.

Turns out that probably wasn't entirely the case.

A fair few, I suspect, were quite happy to keep an eye on development here and then grab the game "elsewhere" when it appeared. It happens. I'm not naive enough to think it doesn't.

In addition, there have been 3x the number of new Freebie members signed up since Chapter 3 released than new Patrons. At least people enjoy it!! Thanks for being here .. but .. you know ..

Special mention has to go to the couple of people who apparently got Chapter 3 elsewhere, then signed up here because they thought Chapter 4 was already available, only to get pissed at me when they realised they'd basically just paid for the Chapter 3 they'd already downloaded for free. You nearly got there, lads. Just in the wrong order

For anybody who doesn't really know what I do outside of this place, I don't just make Visual Novels.

I'm also a YouTuber and professional 3D artist. I make tutorials, do commissions, create promo artwork for Daz products, build assets and scripts, and generally do a whole pile of other things as my "day job".

All of which helps pay the bills and fund the extravagant lifestyle of my Credit Card Happy Wife.

Getting Chapter 3 finished and out the door over the last few months probably cost me a few thousand in lost income because I simply wasn't doing as much of that other work. I'd hoped the release of Chapter 3 might plug a reasonable part of that gap and then some. But for a variety of reasons, it hasn't got there yet.

So I need to reprioritise and rebalance things a little.

Behind The Curtain has never really been what I'd call a mainstream Adult Visual Novel. I've always described it more as a Visual Novel with tits and blow jobs than a full-on AVN.

Some of the reasons it sits outside the AVN mainstream I knew from the beginning as BtC was never really intended to be a full release. Some things I've learnt through experience.

However, I'm going to have to jiggle my priorities around a little bit if I'm going to devote myself to doing VNs full time which I do enjoy doing more than the other stuff which is more like real work!

Work has begun on Chapter 4 of Behind The Curtain (God damn headers on Patreon are garbage!)

Although I did take a little break of BtC after release of Chapter 3, as is only natural, work on Chapter 4 has begun even if it's not "full on" just yet. I've addressed a couple of bugs, wrote a couple of scenes, done renders for those scenes, planned to redo a couple of scenes from Chapter 3 that caused a couple of issues. Like I say, thing's are happening if not at 100mph just yet

Prepping Behind The Curtain For Steam​

Releasing Behind The Curtain into Early Access on Steam seems like the obvious next step now that there's a decent chunk of content there.

So at the moment I'm taking a bit of a birds-eye view of the game.

Looking at criticism. Looking at things players like. Looking at things that annoy people.

Looking at things that maybe made sense when I originally designed them but might need changing for a wider Steam audience.

Basically giving the whole thing a bit of a once-over before pushing it out into a much bigger market.

Chapter 4 will continue alongside that work, although its priority will drop while I get the Steam side of things sorted and get another project properly moving.

But Steam release of not .. Priority will always be here at Patreon so don't worry on that score

Patreon Tiers Are Getting A Rework​

I'm also going to be adding a new £1 tier. That's roughly $1.35 in the US.

There are a lot of people following development who clearly enjoy BtC, read the posts, look at the screenshots and want to know what's coming next, but don't necessarily want to jump straight into one of the existing tiers.

So I'm adding something cheaper. £1 a month. £12 a year. Patreon might take a decent chunk of it - but if enough of you Freebies join the ride, then it will greatly help development.

The £1 tier and above will get all news, development updates, screenshots, previews, dev logs and general behind-the-scenes stuff.

The Free tier will still exist, but it'll mainly be for major announcements.

I'll also be rejigging the higher tiers with this in mind and with .. something else .. in mind too

A New Project​

Because there's this.

I've also been working on something new.

Chapter 1 of "New Project" is already 2x bigger than Chapter 1 of Behind The Curtain in half the development time as I've been throwing everything I've learnt over the last few years into it.

They'll be better renders, faster development, better in game systems, better planning and more mainstream AVN appeal.

The last bit is important if I want to bring in a wider array of support for what we do over here. I've been working my nuts off on it over the last couple of months and I'll be revealing a lot more very soon.

I've basically said "fuck it" and turned the dials up to 11 on this .. Sun. Sea. Sand. Sex and Sangria. Gorgeous girls and a story that covers 400 years.

I'll give more details shortly as it gets closer to completion

Onwards and Upwards

Once again, genuinely, thank you to everybody who's supported Behind The Curtain so far. There's plenty more coming.

And apparently I've decided I don't like having free time anymore.